The Oakland Press /DOUG BAUMAN
Jeffrey Pyne of Highland Twp. stands as the jury for his murder trial walks into the Oakland County Circuit Courtroom of Judge Leo Bowman. Pyne is accused of murdering his mother.

"He lied so effortlessly to me, to my family, to my friends," she said.

"He had a whole elaborate story to cover his tracks. The fact that he could look in my face, my mom's face and everybody ... I know some people might think that's not a big deal, but if you knew Jeff, if you knew his character and you knew what type of person he was, you couldn't even fathom the fact that he could do something like that."

Freeman said Pyne's parents did not approve of their relationship because she did not share the Pyne family's religious beliefs.

The relationship between Freeman and the Pyne family became more strained after Jeffrey Pyne told his mother that they had been having sex.

"I was upset," Freeman said.

"I believe I just said it was none of their business. I made it clear that I was not happy about it."

In previous testimony, witnesses described how religious Ruth Pyne was. She often spoke about her strong feelings on abstinence.

"She didn't believe I was a virgin," Freeman said of Ruth Pyne.

"I threatened to leave (Jeffrey Pyne) after that. I strongly thought about it because it was so upsetting, but he promised he wouldn't tell his mother anything anymore."

Freeman said Jeffrey Pyne told her that his mother had been storing knives in the headboard of her bed. She had been carrying a bible around and watching religious programming and "believed her medication was sorcery and witchcraft and therefore it was evil," Freeman said.

"I did not think it was a good idea for Ruth to ever be left alone in the house with (her then 10-year-old daughter, Julia)."

She also testified that Bernie Pyne transfered about $14,000 into Jeffrey Pyne's bank account, and "around the same" amount into Julia Pyne's account, in order to keep it from Ruth Pyne

Freeman said Pyne came to her house the day after the homicide.

"As soon as he came into the garage, he fell to his knees and started crying, and I took him up to my room and I was consoling him in my room," she said.

It was there that she noticed the bandages on Pyne's blistered hands.

"I let go of him and I said 'What are those?' He told me that his hands got caught in a pallet," Freeman said.

"I said 'That doesn't look like a pallet can do that.'"

Freeman made him take the bandages off and she observed his injuries.

"I said 'It does not look good that you have marks on your hands like that,'" she said.

Freeman asked Pyne to describe what happened that day, and he shared the same story that he told investigators -- that he was transplanting plants at Diane Needham's house and went directly from there to work that afternoon.

Freeman asked if he had argued with his mother that day.

"He paused for a moment and he looked at me, and he goes 'Are you looking at me right now?' He looked at me like 'How could you even think that?'"

Freeman continued to see Pyne for a while, but always under her parents' watch, and never again intimately. She said she decided to break things off completely when she was subpoenaed to testify in front of a grand jury for the case.

She said she initially believed Ruth Pyne's husband, Bernie Pyne, may have committed the crime, because "he didn't want to pay alimony and he had a violent history with her and I knew that he had a temper, and I couldn't think of anybody else who would want to do this."

However, she eventually changed her thoughts.

"Bernie has a handful of people who can testify where he was during the murder," she said.

"He was willing to cooperate (with investigators)."

Jurors also heard testimony Tuesday from a forensic scientist with the Michigan State Police, a woman who carpooled to college classes with Jeffrey Pyne, a neighbor of Diane Needham and a woman who was dating Bernie Pyne in 2009 and 2010.

The trial is scheduled to resume at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in front of Oakland County Circuit Judge Leo Bowman.